


Choices

by ami_ven



Category: Firefly
Genre: Community: writerverse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-12
Updated: 2014-04-12
Packaged: 2018-01-19 01:53:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1451050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ami_ven/pseuds/ami_ven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon knows he should disapprove— but he also knows that he can’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Choices

**Author's Note:**

> written for LJ community "writerverse" prompts "that's my sister!" & "future" (with a bonus for present tense)

Simon knows he should disapprove— really, he should strongly object and maybe even try to keep them apart— but he also knows that he can’t. Not now.

River is his sister, and he wants to protect her, but he can’t do it forever. Even if they were still on Osiris, if River had never gone to the Academy, if he was still a fancy doctor and River was a dancer or a mathematician or whatever her genius would have led her to be, eventually she would find someone and leave him behind.

If Simon had any choice, he would never have picked _this_ someone, but wasn’t and River has made her choice.

Jayne is different since Miranda, since Ariel. He’s oddly _less_ afraid of River now that he knows what she is. And maybe it isn’t that odd at all. Maybe that’s why Simon is content to lean against the galley hatchway, watching River and Jayne cleaning their guns at the dining table. Jayne asks something, softly, and River holds out a cleaning cloth, but she doesn’t release it until he has given her a brief, gentle kiss.

Simon turns away, back toward the engine room. Not long ago, Simon wouldn’t have let Jayne anywhere near his baby sister, and he still doesn’t really want to contemplate that he might someday have a mercenary as a brother-in-law, but he doesn’t get to plan River’s future anymore. He had been protecting the girl she had been, but the Alliance had taken her away and made her into a weapon.

And maybe, the best person to care for a weapon-woman is a man who is good with guns.

THE END


End file.
